Search results for "Economic feasibility"
showing 6 items of 16 documents
Techno-economic analysis of integrated processes for the treatment and valorisation of neutral coal mine effluents
2020
Abstract The disposal of highly-concentrated neutral coal mine effluents into the environment constitutes a severe threat to the natural ecosystem. This work proposes and compares five novel treatment chains to purify the effluent and recover raw materials. The chains present different combinations of pre-treatment and concentration technologies. In all cases, the solution sent to the concentration step is concentrated up to saturation to recover water and sodium chloride. Concerning the technical performances, the treatment chains are compared in terms of total energy demand and salt recovery. Furthermore, the economic feasibility assessment is performed via a novel global parameter, i.e. …
Economic and Environmental Assessment of Biomass Power Plants in Southern Italy
2022
In 2019, Europe adopted the New Green Deal as a strategic plan to become a competitive, resource-efficient, and driven economy by reducing its gas emissions and carbon footprint. Due the COVID-19 pandemic, this strategic plan was recently updated to expedite the green transition of European industries. Therefore, the present paper deals with the problem of deciding an appropriate size for a biomass plant that directly produces electric energy by means of two different conversion processes: combustion and gasification. After an initial estimation of the energy potential in western Sicily, GIS data of biomass growth were used to identify the appropriate size for the power plants under investi…
Economic feasibility of a customer-side energy storage in the Italian electricity market
2015
Electricity prices show significant short-term variations during the day due to the need of balancing supply and demand in real time. Normally, customers are not exposed to these variations but pay a constant electricity price. In an attempt to reduce the volatility of the wholesale prices, several utilities are moving from conventional fixed-rate pricing schemes to new market-based models, where the electricity price can fluctuate during the day depending on the market conditions. Examples of time-dependent pricing schemes are Time-Of-Use (TOU) tariffs, where the electricity price can take two or three price levels during the day, or Real-Time Pricing (RTP) tariffs, where the energy price …
Energy Communities in urban areas: Comparison of energy strategy and economic feasibility in Italy and Spain
2023
Energy communities using renewable energy sources directly contributes to reduction of climate-change gas emissions and energy consumption in the European Union. In addition, energy communities enable citizens to transform from (passive) consumers to prosumers (active consumers and producers) and to play a proactive role in the deployment of energy transition in urban areas. As the transposition of European rules about energy communities into the national laws of EU Member States is very articulated and differentiated, this study proposes a framework to analyze and compare regulatory and financial instruments. This framework is applied to the analysis of the case of Italy and Spain, as repr…
Public and Private Economic Feasibility of Green Areas as a Passive Energy Measure: A Case Study in the Mediterranean City of Trapani in Southern Ita…
2022
Green infrastructure in urban environments provides a wide range of ecological, social, aesthetic, and health co-benefits. Urban plant covers in particular contribute to improved outdoor environmental conditions that, in turn, influence the energy behavior of buildings and their indoor thermo-hygrometric comfort performance. Within this context, this study illustrates a methodology aimed at verifying the economic feasibility of alternative types of green areas for public and private stakeholders, which are analyzed as passive energy measures. Therefore, our methodology integrates approaches from different disciplines and consists of a microclimatic analysis of different vegetation scenarios…
Preface to “Efficiency, Fairness and Sustainability in Social Housing Policy and Projects”
2023
The provision of affordable housing for low-income households is a very complex issue long debated in many countries around the world. Social Housing (SH) is one of the tools for achieving fairness, social sustainability and economic feasibility, and is interrelated with politics, ethics and economics, as well as the environment, architecture and technology. In other words, national and local policy, and also public and private financial resources are all needed to provide SH. SH also involves social and urban transformations and is, consequently, linked to urban planning and redevelopment projects, real estate market dynamics and cooperation between public and private stakeholders. Further…